Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Frisco? A bunch of us were shooting the breeze the other day and we decided that if you and the rest of Cali ever wanted to secede from the Union and rejoin Mexico, join Canada or form your own basket case of a country, none of us Tea Party wingnuts will stand in your way. Why? Larry Brinkin:Larry Brinkin, who worked at the Human Rights Commission for the City of San Francisco for 22 years and was a prominent homosexual rights activist for more than 40 years, pleaded guilty to felony child pornography possession last week.Brinkin is expected to serve six months in jail, five years of probation, and register as a sex offender for the rest of his life when he is sentenced on Mar. 5. But he likely will get to keep his city pension because possessing and viewing child porn apparently is not considered a crime of “moral turpitude” under San Francisco’s retirement/pension rules.

More on that last sentence in a few moments. I’m not posting this to make points at the hands of homosexuals. You and I both know that gays with a conscience will be horrified at all this, particularly at one of Brinkin’s e-mails reproduced in the story. The language has been cleaned up but I’m not going to copy it here.

It’s that bad.

I mention this only to note that the very people who would be shrieking like banshees if Brinkin were a Catholic priest are closing ranks.After Brinkin’s initial arrest, Theresa Sparks, executive director of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission, told the media, “It’s almost incredulous, there’s no way I could believe such a thing. He’s always been one of my heroes, and he’s the epitome of human rights activist – this is the man who coined phrases we use in our daily language. I support Larry 100%. Hopefully, it will all come out in the investigation.”Bevan Dufty, who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and now is director of Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement in the mayor’s office, following Brinkin’s arrest said, “I have admired and respected his work for the LGBT community. I respect and am confident that there will be due process.”

Did you know that in Frisco, possessing and viewing kiddie porn does not constitute “moral turpitude?”Concerning whether Brinkin will retain his city pension, his attorney Randall Knox said he did not think the felony child porn possession conviction was relevant because it apparently does not fall under “moral turpitude,” as explained in the city rule Proposition C.“This is not a moral turpitude crime,” Knox told the Bay Area Reporter, and it is “not something that happened when he was working for the city.”

But if Larry had lifted office supplies or something, the whole might of San Franciso would have come down on his sorry ass like a ton of bricks.In a June 2008 voter guide released by SPUR, a non-profit group that focuses on urban policy in San Francisco, it explains Proposition C- Moral Turpitude as follows, “As applied to crimes that might be committed in connection with employment with the City, moral turpitude often involves some kind of theft of public property, including materials and services.